What is EdgeRank? [Illustration]

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What is EdgeRank?

Thats a great question… What is Edge Rank, everyone talks about it, but what is it. I found this great infographic so thought I would add it in here as I know some of you just love these clever explanations of things that seems technical :-)

 By Daniel Jones
So much is made of the influence of Content Marketing on search, but the value goes far beyond a single platform. A well-designed and implemented Facebook marketing strategy based around content can yield tremendous ROI. The key to solving that puzzle is understanding how content is shared and consumed on the platform. In this illustration we explore EdgeRank: what makes it work and more importantly how a marketer can harness its power to yield results.

What is EdgeRank?
Source: CopyPress

EdgeRank is an algorithm developed by Facebook to govern what is displayed (and how high) on the News Feed.

What is the EdgeRank algorithm?

 

This algorithm can be understood as: the sum of Edges, each Edge is made up of (Affinity, Weight, & Time Decay). This may sound complicated at first, but when you begin to understand the underlying concept, it’s actually a brilliantly simple and effective algorithm. We’ll dive into the details and provide a working example.

What is an Edge?
An Edge is basically everything that “happens” in Facebook. Examples of Edges would be status updates, comments, likes, and shares. There are many more Edges than our small list, simply put any action that happens within Facebook is an Edge.

What Does EdgeRank Do?
EdgeRank ranks Edges in the News Feed. EdgeRank looks at all of the Edges that are connected to the User, it then ranks each edge to understand the importance to the User. Objects with the highest EdgeRank will typically go to the top of the News Feed (there is a small component of randomization).

What is Affinity?
Affinity is a one-way relationship between a User and an Edge. It could be understood as how close of a “relationship” a Brand and a Fan may have. Affinity is built by repeat interactions with a Brand’s Edges. Actions such as Commenting, Liking, Sharing, Clicking, and even Messaging can influence a User’s Affinity.

What is Weight?
Weight is a value system created by Facebook to increase/decrease the value of certain actions within Facebook. Commenting is more involved and therefore deemed more valuable than a Like. In the weighting system, Comments would have a higher value than a Like. In this system all Edges are assigned a value chosen by Facebook. As a general rule, it’s best to assume Edges that take the most time to accomplish tend to weigh more.

For engagement Edges we generally say Shares > Comments > Likes > Clicks. For content type Edges we’ve seen Videos > Photos > Status Updates > Links.

What is Time Decay?
Time Decay refers to how long the Edge has been alive; the older it is the less valuable it is. Time Decay is the easiest of the variables to understand. Mathematically it is understood as 1/(Time Since Action). As an Edge ages, it loses value. This helps keep the News Feed fresh with interesting new content, as opposed to lingering old content.

Working Example
Chad Wittman’s Hypothetical News Feed:

  • Brother’s Photo (Created recently, no engagement)
  • High School Friend Status Update (Created 12 hours ago, high engagement)
  • Brand Page’s Photo (Created 4 hours ago, high engagement)
  • Casual Acquaintance Status Update (Created 2 hours ago, low engagement)

EdgeRank Working Example

Why are these updates arranged in this particular order? Ultimately, EdgeRank is the determining factor of this particular arrangement. As you can see, a brand that leverages EdgeRank was able to enter the News Feed among friends and family.

Why is EdgeRank Important?
If a Brand generally has low EdgeRank objects, then the Brand’s updates will be seen by less people. This means that their Facebook marketing budget is being less effective than it could be. Brands that are succeeding with high EdgeRank objects are leveraging their Facebook budget by multitudes. The difference between leveraging and being punished by EdgeRank is substantial. The difference can result in a 5x difference in exposure.

What is EdgeRank Checker’s EdgeRank Score?
EdgeRank Checker measures the average impact of EdgeRank on a Brand. EdgeRank Scores are determined per object, per day with the average Fan. This helps Brands get a general understanding of how EdgeRank is impacting their Facebook marketing efforts. EdgeRank Scores can fluctuate depending on the success of their objects and Competitive EdgeRank. It’s free and easy to check your EdgeRank Score.

How Do I Optimize For EdgeRank?
Your Brand will ultimately be judged by your ability to engage your content. Some Brands have natural success such as the NBA and NFL due to their media rich and highly engaged audience.This entry was posted in EdgeRank, FAQ and tagged , , by Chad Wittman. Bookmark the permalink.

There you go, two experts posts all about Edgerank and what it is… hopefully you are even more enlightened now :-)
What do you think about Facebooks Edgerank concept… do you even care what Edgerank is and what it does. Let me know. Comment and share

 

 

8 Tips for Using Facebook Scheduled Posts

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8 Tips for Using Facebook Scheduled Posts

I know I have already showed and spoken about how to do the Facebook Scheduled posts but I say this post on the Social Examiner and thought it was worth putting on my blog and sharing with you all.

I just love the whole schedule posting it is fantastic. I have been away the last 3 weeks and it’s been so easy to not only schedule my wordpress posts but also to schedule my Facebook posts as well.

I have put the video in here on this posts that I did as well so if you like to watch and learn then this will be great for you. You you like to read and look at pictures this post will also work for you.

Here is the article from the Social Examiner
Are you crunched for time?

Could you use a little Facebook automation in your life? Well, help is here.

Facebook allows you to schedule your page posts.

Many people cheered this feature because Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm and other quirks make using third-party tools like HootSuite or SocialOomph for scheduling your posts less desirable than posting manually.

Let’s dig a little deeper and find out some of the nuances of using Facebook scheduled posts.

First, we will give you the steps to schedule your posts and edit them.

#1: How to Schedule Your Posts

Scheduling is easy—just follow these steps:

Write your post as you normally would. You can attach photos, add links, add YouTube videos, add tags to other pages and events or just include regular text.

schedule your post

Type your post as you would normally.

  • In the lower-left corner of your post, click on the clock symbol as shown in the screenshot above. You can now add the year, month, day and time you want the post to go out.
    add the date

    Add the date and time you want your post go out.

Notice that you can also backdate your posts to supplement your Timeline if you wish (more on that later).

You can schedule your post up to 6 months in the future (more months are shown, but if you select more than 6 months out, Facebook won’t accept it). You can schedule the minutes at 00-, 10-, 20-, 30-, 40- or 50-minute marks of the hour. So if you need a post to go out specifically at 2:15 pm, you cannot set it.

  • You can also add language and location targeting in your scheduled posts, just like you can in your regular posts. Just click on the Public icon and make the necessary adjustments.
  • Once you have everything set, just click the blue Schedule button. Voilà! Now just remember to circle back to your posts later after the scheduled time to watch for follow-up comments!

#2: How to Find and Edit Your Scheduled Posts

To see what you have scheduled and make any changes, just go to your activity log by accessing the admin panel at the top of your page (if you don’t see the admin panel, click the red admin panel button in the upper-right corner), then click Edit Page, and Activity Log. You then see all of your scheduled posts.

find activity log

Use the activity log to find your scheduled posts.

activity log

View your scheduled posts.

If you need to edit your scheduled post, the only thing you can change from here is the time, unfortunately. To edit the text, you must cancel the post and redo your scheduling. To cancel or change the time, mouse over the upper-right corner of the post in the activity log.

editing a post

You can only change the time or cancel the post and start over.

#3: You Can’t Schedule Everything

You can schedule links, photos, status updates and videos (although I found scheduling a video to be a bit buggy). You can also schedule a YouTube video link, which will attach as it normally does in your posts.

schedule a photo

You can schedule a photo.

You can’t schedule some of the other types of posts as you can normally do from the publisher, such as photo albums, posting of events, questions, offers and milestones.

#4: You Can Backdate Your Posts

You can schedule things in the past. I’m not sure why you would want to use the backdating feature other than to fill out your Timeline a bit. But if you have a significant event that you want to post about in the past, I recommend a milestone post instead.

The interesting thing about backdating is that the post does go out into people’s news feed immediately and then is shown at the appropriate place on your Timeline.

back dating a post

The backdated post goes out immediately into the news feed with a note about when it was added into the Timeline.

#5: Scheduled Posts Won’t be Automatically Tweeted

If you have linked your Twitter account to your Facebook page by setting up www.Facebook.com/Twitter so that everything you post on Facebook gets tweeted (yes, we know that it’s not always a great idea but sometimes it isn’t terrible), be aware that your scheduled posts won’t go out to Twitter.

So if you rely on your Facebook page to supplement your tweets and you move to more scheduled posts, you will have to schedule your tweets with a different tool.

#6: Scheduling Posts Can Bring about More Engagement

What can you expect when you schedule posts? It depends on your baseline right now with your Facebook page—how often you are posting, how engaged your audience is, what you are posting and other factors.

One thing that scheduling can do for you is allow you to post more regularly and increase your posting without spending all day on your Facebook page.

Randi Thompson of How to Market Your Horse Business (and an active member of our Social Networking Clubs) tried an experiment where she upped the number of posts by using scheduled posts on two of her pages.

On her How to Market Your Horse Business page, she went from posting 3 times a day to posting every 3 hours and 5 times a day. Then she had another page, Horse and Rider Awareness, where she was not posting regularly at all. She tried scheduling 3 quality posts per day. Here are her results over a 5-day period.

horse business horse awareness

Using Scheduled posts to increase post frequency helped increase engagement.

Now of course this is not a comprehensive study. And this could be done without scheduling posts. But the point is that scheduled posts can make things easier for you so you can batch your work, know that things are being posted at the times you want and you can get on with other parts of your business. I encourage you to try some experiments with scheduled posts on your page and see how things work for you.

And again, make sure you circle back to these posts to follow up on comments!

#7: Scheduled Posts are not Identified or “Punished” in Facebook

When you post from a different scheduling tool such as HootSuite or BufferApp, people can see that you’re posting through a different tool. But Facebook’s scheduled posts are seamless.

buffer app

The posting tool appears under the post.

Using a different tool to post to Facebook is not all bad. Sometimes it’s much better to save yourself a little time and get the post out with the tool you’re using rather than not post at all.

But Facebook has been known to show posts using third-party tools a little less in the news feed or collapse them. As of this writing, I believe third-party tools are faring well in Facebook. But we all know how Facebook changes.

#8: Scheduled Posts May be Coming to Personal Profiles

The option does appear to schedule a Facebook post on personal profiles, which may be a good thing for people who are using their personal profiles to talk about business. But as of this writing, I could not schedule anything into the future, only for today or in the past.

Not everyone will see big changes by scheduling posts. You still have to deliver engaging Facebook content. But what scheduled posts can do is free up some of your time by allowing you to batch your social media posts into blocks and give you more time to focus on your business.

What are your thoughts? Have you been using scheduled posts? What results have you seen? Tell us in the comments section below!

About the Author, Andrea Vahl

Andrea Vahl is the Community Manager for Social Media Examiner and the co-author Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies. She is also a social media coach, speaker and strategist. Other posts by »

Have a go at using this amazing tool and tell me how it’s working for you.
So there you have it: 8 Tips for Using Facebook Scheduled Posts

 

 

 

Promoted Posts on Facebook

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Promoted Posts on Facebook

I have been using the Promoted Posts Feature on Facebook since it came out and have noticed a big increase in the amount of traffic I am getting to my websites. So much now coming via Facebook and also increase in sales. Now I am not going to say huge increase in sales. But a steady growth in that area.

I know some think it is not good that they now have to pay to get people to see their posts. But it is the way it is. and in a past video and blog I showed you how to set up groups and lists in Facebook and so using that feature will mean your message will get out to a more targeted group.

I have done a video to show you what I am doing with the Promoted Posts and then tagged on the end is the video from Facebooks promotion group all about it as well.

I think it is a great feature and worth using, just make sure you have a realistic budget.

Promoted Posts On Facebook Video

Here is an article which shows and explains it all very well

5 Tips for Using Facebook’s New Promoted Posts

If your business’ Facebook Page has more than 400 likes, you now have the option to try a new advertising feature called “Promoted Posts.” The button, which you’ll find at the bottom of the status update box, lets you select a budget and will generate an estimated reach of that post.

Promoted posts appear not only in the news feeds of the people who like your page, but in the news feeds of friends of the people who have interacted with your post, according to Facebook. This is the latest in a series of recent updates to Facebook business Pages.

Here’s a look at some of the feature’s highlights, plus tips from Facebook on how to best use it.

1. How to Promote a Page Post

To promote a Page post, navigate to the update status box and type in the post details. At the bottom of the box, click on the Promote drop-down button and set your desired budget. This budget is a lifetime budget and not a daily budget.

When you’re done, click Save.

Posts that are eligible to be promoted include Page posts you’ve created in the last three days: status updates, photos, offers, videos and questions. To promote a past post, click the Promote button just below where people can add a comment, select a budget and click Save.

If you need to, you can change your promoted post’s budget. Do this by clicking on the “Promoted for $X” button, selecting the pencil icon next to Budget and choosing your new budget. Then click Save. Your new budget will go into effect immediately.

Once your promoted post is live, it will appear in news feeds with a “Sponsored” label on the bottom.

[Want more tips, tricks and details on Facebook? Check out CIO.com's Facebook Bible.]

2. How to Target and Pause Promoted Posts

When you create a post, you have the option to target a specific location or language from the “Public” drop-down menu under the sharing tool. Targeting an audience based on location or language will likely decrease the estimated reach the post has, however.

To target a specific location or language, click on the “Public” button under the sharing tool when you’re creating a page post, then select “Location / Language.”

On the next form, enter in the location you want to target. You can choose by country, state/province, city and language. Then click Okay to finish.

To pause a promoted post, go to your Page timeline and find the post you’re promoting. At the bottom of the post below where people can add a comment, click on the “Promoted for $X” button. At the bottom of this page, click on the “Stop Promotion” link. Your promotion will be updated and the button will say, “Promotion Paused.”

To resume your promotion, follow the same steps.

3. How to View Your Promotions Performance

Soon after promoting a post, you’ll be able to see its performance at the bottom of the post in the links to the left of the Promote button. Hovering over the link to the number of people reached will give you more information about the people who saw this post, including information on your organic reach, viral reach and paid reach.

Hovering over the percentage link will give you insight into the total percentage of people who like your Page that you reached through the promotion.

4. How Your Promotions Are Billed

Your promoted posts will be billed to the same account you designated in your Ads Manager. You can view your primary funding source as well as access invoices from the gear-icon drop-down menu in the “Promote” button, or from your Ads Manager.

From the “Promote” button, click the gear icon and select “Change payment method.” Here, you can see all payment methods listed on your ads account and make any changes to your primary funding source.

5. Best Practices for Promoting Posts

To help you and your business succeed with Promoted Posts, Facebook put together a list of four tips:

Add photos and videos: “People tend to respond to bright, simple and attention-grabbing images, particularly of people using your product or service. For example, you could promote a photo of new products you want to sell. Keep in mind that your Page’s profile picture will show up next to your promoted post so everyone knows its connected to your business.”

Promote offers: “Promoting an offer can help increase the number of people who see and claim your offer. This can help to drive more people to your business and increase engagement on your Page.”

Highlight exclusive events or news: “Promoting posts with exclusive content gets people to talk about your Page and share your posts with their friends. This could be a daily special on the menu, an in-store event or the launch of an upcoming product.”

Ask a question: “Promoting a question tells people that you value their opinion. For example, you could promote a question asking people to vote on a new product or service, which encourages people to have a direct impact on your business decisions.”

Kristin Burnham covers consumer technology, social networking and enterprise collaboration for CIO.com. Follow Kristin on Twitter @kmburnham. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter @CIOonline and on Facebook. Email Kristin at kburnham@cio.com

 
Hope this has been helpful to you and would love it if you would share it, comment on it, Google + it . Tell me your experience of using Promoted Posts on Facebook

 

 

How to Schedule Facebook Posts

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How to Schedule Facebook Posts

This is such a cool feature, I am wondering if any of you know How to Schedule Facebook Posts.
We have been using the same feature on wordpress for years so when this came out I was over the moon. It is so cool if you are going away on holiday or whatever the reason, to be able to go ahead and schedule a whole lot of posts and get them out there.

Of course you still have to go in and answer or respond but it is just easier than having to remember through the day to go and post on Facebook. If you have a lot of pages this is also a very handy tool .

 I show everything in the video so take a look at  How to Schedule Facebook Posts.

I also talk to you about the 80/20 rule. It’s funny how one can apply that rule to so many things in life.

So on your Facebook profile you can use the 80/20 in that as its a personal profile you should be 80% all about you, work, hobbies, trips or whatever family stuff and 20% business, that would be affiliate programs or Network marketing or your own offline business. Of course it’s the other way round on your business/fanpage.

Some people just like to sell you over and over and if you are like me that just rattles your cage :-)

If you do this right you will have a great following, people will love you for giving great content and also for making them laugh. It’s a win win isn’t it.

If this was helpful please share, or write a comment or something…. help me out here I want a great ranking for my page lol

Join me on my Facebook Page

 

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